Morgan's Death's Acre Essay

Death’s Acre is an in depth description of the Body Farm, a forensic lab that was established by Dr. Bill Bass in order to study and observe bodies in the postmortem stages. His book is an account of various crimes that he dealt with, from his educational career to his years as a professional forensic scientist. It also discusses many techniques that scientists use to uncover extensive amounts of information about a decomposing body and how these observations help them to crack difficult crimes. For example, Dr. Bass and his colleagues were studying the remains of thousands of Native Americans. Dr. Bass stated that they were able to calculate “their size, their strength, their diet, their average life span, infant mortality rates, and a wealth of other information.” One of the most incredible strategies that they used was observing the insect life in the surrounding area. They soon noticed anthills near small objects and artifacts. Underneath the anthills were hundreds of burials. Insects are studied in many cases, usually to figure out a time of death, or perhaps the environment that the corpse had been in. H.B. Reed discovered that the number of insects on or in the body increased during the spring and summer, and therefore bodies found during those seasons will decompose at a faster rate than one found in the fall or winter. Insects usually fill areas such as the nose, mouth, and eyes and lay thousands of eggs that very quickly hatch into maggots. Other insects then come to the body to feed on the maggots and their eggs, further elaborating on a time line of the body’s death. In a later case, an eighteen-year-old girl’s body was found in the woods and had been infested with insects. Her face was practically gone, however, it had not decomposed as it usually would. The amount of insects led scientists to believe that there was a blood wound somewhere on the body. When blood is present, a phenomenon called “differential decomposition” occurs, in which bugs will eat away at areas of the body where blood is present at a much faster rate than they would if blood was not present.
Finally, Dr. Bass also goes into detail about the four major stages of human decomposition. The body goes through the fresh stage, the bloated stage, the decay stage, and the dry stage. In the fresh stage hair and skin begin to decompose, along with the teeth. During the bloated stage bacteria begin to consume the stomach and intestines. The abdomen will begin to bloat due to the release of waste gases from microbes. In the decay stage hair and skin continue to disintegrate and most of the bones become exposed. Finally, in the dry stage any remaining skin dries out and shrivels, similarly to fallen leaves. This is an important note because the dried skin could often be confused for leaf litter at a crime scene.
Through Dr. Bill Bass’s intricate description of forensic science, I have come to realize how important every detail is. To successfully solve a crime, no matter how simplistic it may appear, it is imperative to take each detail into account.